Oral History Interview with Dock E. Hall, January 7, 1976.
Interview H-0271. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007):
Electronic Edition. Mining in the New SouthHall, Dock E.,
interviewee Interview conducted by Glass, BrentFunding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the
electronic publication of this interview.Text encoded by Jennifer JoynerSound recordings digitized by Aaron SmithersSouthern Folklife CollectionFirst edition, 2007196 KbThe University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, North Carolina2007.

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Oral History Interview with Dock E. Hall, January 7,
1976. Interview H-0271. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)Series H. Piedmont Industrialization. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (H-0271)Brent Glass153 MbChapel Hill, N. C.Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill7 January 1976Oral History Interview with Dock E. Hall, January
7, 1976. Interview H-0271. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)Series H. Piedmont Industrialization. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (H-0271)Dock E. Hall47 p.Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at
Chapel HillChapel Hill, North Carolina7 January 1976Interview conducted on January 7, 1976, by Brent Glass; recorded in Unknown. Transcribed by Patricia Crowley. Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series H. Piedmont Industrialization, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.

The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.

An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.

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Library of Congress Subject HeadingsDocumenting the American South TopicsEnglishWorking Conditions North Carolina2007-00-00, Celine Noel, Wanda Gunther, and Kristin Martin revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic
edition.2007-05-17, Jennifer Joyner finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
Interview with Dock E. Hall, January 7, 1976. Interview H-0271.
Conducted by Brent Glass

Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round
Wilson Library

Citation of this interview should be as follows: “Interview
H-0271, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”

Dock Hall's working life spanned a number of southern industries,
including lumber, furniture, and mining. Hall focuses on mining in this
interview, describing his work underground as a chucker (in which his task was
to keep another miner's equipment cool with water), and above ground
in a stamping mill, extracting valuable minerals from pieces of rock. While he
and others preferred better-paying mine work to textile work, work in the mines
could mean long hours and unpleasant conditions. As one of relatively few
interviews in this collection that focus on mining, this selection should be of
use to researchers interested in issues concerning that industry, ranging from
daily routines to deadly accidents.

Short Abstract

Dock Hall recalls his laboring life, focusing on his years as a miner.

D-o-c-k Edward Hall: that's what I get my Social Security
check about, and that's what you want. And that's
what everyone knows me by. They named me after
Dock Edward Hall.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes. And when were you born?

DOCK E. HALL:

I was born in Moore County, right close to Carthage.

BRENT GLASS:

And when was this?

DOCK E. HALL:

1892, December the twelfth.

BRENT GLASS:

What did your parents do? What were your parents' names?

DOCK E. HALL:

My parents were Dick Hall and Camoline Hall.

BRENT GLASS:

Camoline.

DOCK E. HALL:

Camoline Harris it was before she was ever married.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes. She was a Harris?

DOCK E. HALL:

She was a Harris.

BRENT GLASS:

And what did they do?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well now, he was a sawmiller when I was born, when there was timber in
there where the peach orchards and all that big long-leaf pine are.

BRENT GLASS:

What kind of sawmill did he have?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, he had about as big a one as you could have around this part of the
country.

BRENT GLASS:

Really?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. It wasn't one of these like they have now. It was a big
sawmill where they worked seven, eight, ten men around the mill.

BRENT GLASS:

Was it run by steam?

DOCK E. HALL:

Run by steam: burned the slabs that we cut off of the logs. Burned that
in the boiler to heat steam. And it had an engine set on blocks that
runs with a long belt: that's what run the saw.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he have anything there besides a sawmill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Nothing but mules.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, I mean, did he have a flour mill there too?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

No flour mill? No cotton gin?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. These would move around, the mill would: from sitting down where they
cut out a bunch of timber, then it would move over further. I was born
in a sawmill shack.

BRENT GLASS:

You were born in a sawmill shack?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes sir. And something else you'll be wanting to know, I have
an idea: the morning that I was born there was thirteen inches of snow
on the ground.

BRENT GLASS:

In Moore County?

DOCK E. HALL:

In Moore County, right in close around the peach orchard, where it is
now.

BRENT GLASS:

What was the name of your dad's mill? Was it called
Hall's Mill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Nobody was with him then that I know of. Maybe it was Russell and
Hall—as well as I remember myself, you know, to go ahead and
talk about it.

BRENT GLASS:

Russell?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

So your father didn't do any farming?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, not 'til after I was gone, no, did he go back to the
farm. But he owned the sawmill, and did public work—you know,
carpenter and stuff like that.

BRENT GLASS:

What do you mean by public work?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, that's going out, you know, like you were hired and go
into a job. Get a job here and maybe another one somewhere else. What we
call public work is going working by the day or by the month; and
farming's different than that.

BRENT GLASS:

OK. So public work is different from farming?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Why?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, in farming you'd say, "I'm working
for so-and-so on the farm." But, you see, public work, maybe
you was going to one of these factories or shops or something like that:
that's what we called public work.

BRENT GLASS:

Did it have to do with earning a wage?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

You got paid at public work?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, paid by the day—not by the hour then, by the day.

BRENT GLASS:

But on a farm you didn't get paid?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, on the farm they did if they hired somebody, you know; but
generally most of the people done their own work.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. So that's what you mean by "public
work"?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you do any work for your dad in the sawmill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

What kind of work did you do?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, we was talking about firing and burning the slabs and all: I fired
a lot of the time. Then I'd off that lumber from the saw.
They had long roller banks, and then we'd
roll the lumber out to the end of it and throw it, or put it on the
truck. Or if the truck was standing over there, we'd pull it
off and decide where it would be sat. What slabs we didn't
use for boilers or burning, we had a skid fixed out at the end of the
roller banks. We'd put them on that skid and man, take a
whole lot of them and throw them in a big fire out there and burn
them.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And was that hard work?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well some of it was pretty hard work, yes sir.

BRENT GLASS:

Why?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, it was heavy, heavy wood: green, all of it green, you know. Mostly
a lot of pine, but it was green—heavy. Back then
they'd saw big timbers for you any time; these timbers were
long, twelves by twelves maybe. Now you can't hardly find a
piece you'd make a out of like
that.

BRENT GLASS:

That's true.

DOCK E. HALL:

It's all cut out.

BRENT GLASS:

Did your Dad pay you for the work?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, yes, he paid me. You know, he'd pay off his men that
worked his mill for him. He'd be cutting this lumber, and
they'd put it all up on what we called skids: the slack end
of it, put it on skids. And the man that was cutting for him would come
in and check that lumber all out; then he'd pay him what he
had on his skids. Then he'd pay his help—what we
called the laborers, see—then.

BRENT GLASS:

How many people did he have working?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, around the mill sometimes he'd have anywhere from six to
eight around the mill, and maybe four to six in the woods cutting
timber, and about three or four teams that would
haul the logs into the mill.

BRENT GLASS:

That was a big operation.

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, it was back in them days.

BRENT GLASS:

And what was the timber used for? Building houses?

DOCK E. HALL:

All that, yes. And all that to different towns. Didn't have no
trucks or anything like that, just wagons. They'd haul it to
town, and then load it on cars where the trains were. They'd
haul it up to the train station, and they'd load it on the
car and ship it to people. It sold all over the country, everywhere.

BRENT GLASS:

He collected his own timber, then? The farmers didn't bring
timber to him, did them?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. They have done that, but in later years. Back then
somebody'd go by this big pack of timber, and then
he'd go in with the sawmill and he'd cut it and
put it on skids. And then the man that he was cutting timber for would
come and take up how much he'd sawed, and pay him so many
feet of lumber that he had. Then he'd pay off his men,
see.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. How long did your father operate this?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, in years I don't know.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he operate it past the first World War?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, he was going along then; even in the first World War he
saw-milled.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you have a chance to go to school?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, I went to school up 'til I was in what we called then
the fourth reader. That'd be about sixth grade now.

BRENT GLASS:

What is that called again?

DOCK E. HALL:

Didn't have graded schools. Fourth reader: that was just like
the grades are now. See, they'd have
a first reader (with ABC's in it), and then the second reader
and the third reader and the fourth reader. That was kind of like the
grades are now.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. I see. So you went up to fourth reader?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, that's about as far as I got, yes. You might say fourth
reader then would be about the sixth or seventh grade now.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. OK. Did you live right near the sawmill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, generally we always lived pretty close. Like I told you, I was
born in the sawmill shack.

BRENT GLASS:

What do you mean by a sawmill shack?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, you see, they made this building for us to live in.
They'd put them together the best they could, and never left
enough floors (they wouldn't nail them down). And
they'd tear that down when they'd get ready to
move the mill, and set it down in another location. And then
they'd put up the house and we'd move in
there.

BRENT GLASS:

So that was the house your parents lived in, was a sawmill shanty?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. It was when I was born. And don't forget that snow
business I told you: the morning I was born there was thirteen inches of
snow. I told my mother several times

BRENT GLASS:

Did you have any brothers or sisters?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

How many?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I had six brothers and two sisters.
[Interruption]

BRENT GLASS:

You were saying you had (was it) six brothers and two sisters?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, there was nine of us children: I had two sisters, and the rest of them was all boys. They're all
gone but one now; he lives in Montgomery County.

BRENT GLASS:

In Montgomery County?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, this side of Moore. I came here the twenty-first day of October.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, you've only been here a couple of months.

DOCK E. HALL:

Ain't nothing that wrong with me.

BRENT GLASS:

No, you seem about forty-three years old.

DOCK E. HALL:

I tell you, I lived by myself since my wife died ten years ago last May,
but my people wanted me to come here and stay. But as soon as the birds
begin to sing I'm going back home—I've
got my own home, you see, back there.
[Interruption]

BRENT GLASS:

OK, Mr. Hall.

DOCK E. HALL:

I don't know where you stopped off at there.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, we stopped off where we were talking about your brothers and
sisters. So you have six brothers and two sisters.

DOCK E. HALL:

They're all gone but one.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. Did they also (your brothers) work at the sawmill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, they worked sawmill, yes, 'til the last one come back
from what I called public work

BRENT GLASS:

In Thomasville?

DOCK E. HALL:

Thomasville.

BRENT GLASS:

What about your mother? Tell me something about your mother. Where was
she from?

DOCK E. HALL:

She was raised right around in Montgomery County, right around a little place called Eldorado.

BRENT GLASS:

Eldorado?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

And was your father raised in Montgomery too?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, but he was over about four miles from that, called Uwharrie.

BRENT GLASS:

Uwharrie.

DOCK E. HALL:

Close to Uwharrie, yes; they call it Uwharrie now.

BRENT GLASS:

And what kind of household did you have? Was it a big house you lived in,
or just this shanty all the time?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, not all the time. After he quit the sawmilling and come here and went
to carpentry work, why, we always lived in a big house. We had a good
house in Troy.

BRENT GLASS:

In Troy?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. That's in Montgomery: Troy is the county seat for
Montgomery County.

BRENT GLASS:

But you went to school when you were a young man around the mill.

DOCK E. HALL:

You might say Eldorado school. Then when they come here, then I started
in 1902 school here.

BRENT GLASS:

In Thomasville?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. Do you remember any household possessions that you had in your
house? Any pieces of furniture or anything like that that your parents
felt strongly about?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. I tell you, my parents have been dead a good long while. And it was
never divided out; my older sister, she took care of that, and she got
all that property. She sold part.

BRENT GLASS:

Did they have many furnishings, much in the way of household goods?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, pretty good. We was fixed pretty good at home.

BRENT GLASS:

But when you were growing up, you'd say your parents
didn't have much of an income?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, just what he worked out. And after the boys got big enough to work,
of course they stayed at home. They helped out with the family and all
that.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you have any other relatives live with you? Any grandparents or
anything?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, they didn't live with us.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you know your grandparents?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I knew both my grandmothers, but both my granddaddys were done dead
when I was born.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And did they live near you?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, they lived now in close to where I told you in Montgomery, in
Uwharrie—right around in through there.

BRENT GLASS:

How old were you when you moved to Thomasville?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I lacked just a little bit of being ten years old: come in
November, and I was ten years old the twelfth day of December.

BRENT GLASS:

But now, if your father came here in 1902, how did he keep the sawmill
going?

DOCK E. HALL:

He quit that; he done quit the sawmilling then and come here, and went to
work here around. He didn't work in these furniture factories
very much. He worked carpentry work most of the time what he was
here.

BRENT GLASS:

For who?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, you know, different companies, different kind of contractors and things like that.

BRENT GLASS:

What kind of work did he do for them: building their factories?

DOCK E. HALL:

Building houses, and anything like that, you know. Regular construction
work, you might say.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes. But then did he ever go back to sawmilling?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. He went back down home where he had bought some land, and he went
back in and build him home there and stayed down there. Had a home
'til my mother died. Then he stayed on a while there, and
left and went up to Catawba County. He died up in Catawba County, in
Hickory.

BRENT GLASS:

Do you remember anything about childhood games that you used to play with
your chums?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes. We used to play marbles—peadabbles, we called
them.

BRENT GLASS:

Peadabbles?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. Put a bunch of them in, you know, and a ring around; then
we'd shoot marbles. Then we'd do what we used to
call ringman: put five in a flat place like that and, you know, first
make that and shoot at them that way. Me and another fellow'd
be shooting together, and two others, and then we'd match up
to see which one beats, you know, in games.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you play any ball, any baseball?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, played some baseball—back of the school, you know.

BRENT GLASS:

In school?

DOCK E. HALL:

Back of the school.

BRENT GLASS:

What church did you attend?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, when I first began to go to church it was Massadona Church that I
remember about, and that's at Eldorado.

BRENT GLASS:

Is that a Baptist church?

DOCK E. HALL:

It's a Methodist church.

BRENT GLASS:

Methodist church. So what was your first public job?

DOCK E. HALL:

Furniture: worked in a furniture factory here.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you do? What was your job?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, there was a machine called a molder, and I was a tailboy:
I'd catch it coming out of that molder and lay it on a
truck.

BRENT GLASS:

And you were called a tailboy?

DOCK E. HALL:

That's right.

BRENT GLASS:

And all you did was take it from out of the molder and put it in?

DOCK E. HALL:

As it'd come out, yes, I'd catch it and lay it on
the molder as it came out.

BRENT GLASS:

And what did they pay you for that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well now, you wouldn't have no idea how much the pay was back
then. I went to work when I was between eleven and twelve, and
I'd work except school hours, you know, and on Saturday. And
I made thirty cents a day (I mean thirty cents a day) for ten hours:
that's what I made.

BRENT GLASS:

You could work ten hours and go to school at the same time?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, no, no. I said when I wasn't in
school. I'd come out of an evening; school'd be
out about 2:30-3:00, and then I'd work from then on
'til twenty minutes to six. Then on Saturdays I'd
work 'til twenty minutes 'til four.

BRENT GLASS:

And you got paid thirty cents a day for that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Thirty cents a day; yes, thirty cents a day, not hour. That sounds funny
to people that's around and coming up now, but that was right
then.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, what could thirty cents buy?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, good, you could take thirty cents and buy more than you could, about
as much as you could with a dollar now—no, you could buy
more.

BRENT GLASS:

So you thought you were making pretty good money?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I was, yes; at that time, yes, we thought so anyway.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you do with your money when you were eleven or twelve years
old?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I'd buy clothes with it, and buy my sisters thing with
it. My Daddy'd never take anything I worked for.

BRENT GLASS:

He never took anything from you?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, he never did. Looked out for me that and other ways himself.

BRENT GLASS:

Was your father a strict disciplinarian? How did your parents discipline
their children?

DOCK E. HALL:

You mean treated them

BRENT GLASS:

Yes.

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, just as good as people ever could be.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh really? Did they ever spank the children?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, maybe spank them a little or something like that—never
enough to hurt one or nothing—or get a little keen hickory,
or something like that. No, my father didn't do very much of
that. My Momma'd do that; she'd do that kind of
thing. He was working always, and, see, my mother would do the looking
after us. But she didn't have to strike us much. She could
look over toward you that way with her eye right straight at you, and
you knowed you'd done something wrong, and she'd
tell you then. The neighbors used to visit a lot, you know, and
she'd tell us (and there was plenty to eat), "If you
want something to eat you go ahead and get it. You go down to the neighbor's house and ask for something to
eat, I'll whip you when you get back home." And they
would too. You wouldn't do it.

BRENT GLASS:

You wouldn't ask down at the neighbors?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

Did your mother work?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, at nothing but home: home work and garden work, like that, around the
house.

BRENT GLASS:

Did she pretty much run the household?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you have many neighbors over for parties or social gatherings?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, like I said them, we'd go visit other people and
they'd come and visit us. We'd have meals
together, you know, and all stuff like that.

BRENT GLASS:

What would be the occasion? Why would you have them over? Would it be on
Sunday?

DOCK E. HALL:

Just to come over. Well, sometimes on Sundays, sometimes through the
week. Maybe a lady'd come and bring her family, and maybe
stay all day and eat dinner with us, you see. And then she'd
go back home in time to get supper;when her husband'd come
home she'd be at home.

BRENT GLASS:

Who were the friends of your family? How did you meet?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, after I got up in size (before I come to Thomasville) it was
Battons: Mr. John Batton and his family.

BRENT GLASS:

How do you spell that?

DOCK E. HALL:

B-a-t-t-o-n, Batton.

BRENT GLASS:

How did your family meet that family?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, we lived maybe three-quarters of a mile from one another, and us kids would play together. They grew up
right pretty close together, the Battons and my Daddy and Momma.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he meet most of his friends at work?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, a lot of the friends; yes. My Daddy was known everywhere;
they'd call on him from everywhere.

BRENT GLASS:

He was known everywhere?

DOCK E. HALL:

Everywhere around through the country, yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Why?

DOCK E. HALL:

Sawmilling and all like that, you know.

BRENT GLASS:

So when did you take your job at the mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I was up then grown.

BRENT GLASS:

How old were you then?

DOCK E. HALL:

Then I was around right on nineteen or twenty, along then, or twenty-one,
twenty-two, all like that. He lived right close to the mine, my Daddy
did then.

BRENT GLASS:

Now had he moved from Thomasville back to Eldorado?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Why?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, he'd sawmill a little bit, but then he went to work up
at this mine.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, he went to work there too?

DOCK E. HALL:

Carpenter work: building houses, building mill houses and everything at
the mine. He worked at the mine too.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And you went with him? The whole family went?

DOCK E. HALL:

I had married when I was young, and then I worked right on there at the
mine. And my Daddy run a big boarding house there at the mine,

BRENT GLASS:

He ran a boarding house?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Tell me something about the boarding house. How big was it?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I don't know. I expect it must have been about maybe
twelve rooms, and he had maybe twelve or thirteen boarders. A lot of
them would eat dinner there; you know, instead of bringing lunch with
them they'd eat there.

BRENT GLASS:

Did your whole family live in the boarding house?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. My older brothers were married and done gone away. There was me, and
a brother just older than I am, and my two sisters and my father and
mother.

BRENT GLASS:

Lived in the boarding house.

DOCK E. HALL:

They did. I didn't live in the boarding house with them; I
said that was when they lived there.

BRENT GLASS:

And how much would it cost for a room in the boarding house?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, I don't remember how much they did charge. They charged by
the month.

BRENT GLASS:

By the month?

DOCK E. HALL:

That's when they'd pay, every month, you see.
Let's see: then they got to paying the first and the
fifteenth. But I don't remember just what they'd
charge for board.

BRENT GLASS:

Did the company build the boarding house?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Then they hired your father to…

DOCK E. HALL:

To run the place.

BRENT GLASS:

And did your mother do the cooking?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, her, and they hired a couple of help.

BRENT GLASS:

And the company hired the help?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, he done that himself, or my mother did. They didn't do
anything—wanted us to furnish the house. What I mean, they
gave the house but not any furnishing, and we furnished it
ourselves.

BRENT GLASS:

Really?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, they did (my father and mother).

BRENT GLASS:

He wasn't old by then, but he was not a young man anymore.

DOCK E. HALL:

Not a young man, no. Not that big a family, you know.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. Well, what kind of work did you do at the mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I fired a lot on top.

BRENT GLASS:

Fired the boiler?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, fired the boilers, and worked underground in the mine, down in the
mine.

BRENT GLASS:

You did work underground?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, part of the time, yes. I worked down there.

BRENT GLASS:

What were you called? What was your job underground?

DOCK E. HALL:

I was called a chucker.

BRENT GLASS:

A chucker?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. They had these air drills, steam drills, and a man to run the
machine. And I'd throw water and all when it'd get
hot, and stuff like that: throw water and work with him. I just worked
with one man. And we'd be cutting what we called a level. And
the headroom would be up like that, you see, and we'd be
boring holes in that. And I'd take out bits and put in bits
for him, and all that, and change it whichever way he wanted to. If we
wanted to get over there, then I'd change the collar on the
shaft (the up-down piece), and he'd go
ahead and start it up (he'd just crank it a little up).

BRENT GLASS:

How was the air drill run? Wouldn't it run off
electricity?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, it was run by air or steam. It was mostly air at the Coggins when I
was there, but they used to run them by hand. I have worked at different
mines down there—Coggins's not the only one there
is around there. In a ten mile radius there's at least (I
could call the names of them) six in a ten mile radius around.

BRENT GLASS:

What are some of the other ones?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, there's what we call Stone Mountain, and Sally Coggins,
and Morris Mountain, and … let's see now, the
other one down next to …

BRENT GLASS:

Candor is down there, isn't it?

DOCK E. HALL:

That's below, way on below. Yes, Candor's down
there. The other one's Iola Mine—my dad used to
work there some too. That was owned (when he was there) by Jones, M.L.
Jones—I guess a company of them.

BRENT GLASS:

So, just to follow up what you had said, you were called the chucker.
What was the other man called?

DOCK E. HALL:

He was a miner; he was called a miner. He was the one running the
machine.

BRENT GLASS:

So who were some of the miners? Who did you work with? Do you remember
any of the people?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes. I worked with Arthur Lanier, and Paul Cranford, Walter Bean.

BRENT GLASS:

These are all miners?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Were they from around these parts?

DOCK E. HALL:

Right in that part; right around in Davidson County, right around this
mine. A lot of them lived right on the mine, part of it.

BRENT GLASS:

Was a miner considered more skilled than a chucker?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. In other words, a miner, he's the man that run the
machine that would bore the hole. You see, what we'd call it
was breaking the ground. They'd bore them holes the way they
wanted to; then they'd load then with dynamite, and then they
could know how to break the ground. That was the reason:they had the
experience of that. And the chucker was his helper.

BRENT GLASS:

Where did they learn? Where did they get their experience? Were they
older than you?

DOCK E. HALL:

Part of the time they'd learn it there, and part of the time
they'd come (a lot of them) from Gold Hill and places like
that, other old mines way on up. That Coggins Mine was running back
during the Civil War; but, you see, I didn't know anything
about that then. Just what I'm telling you now is what I
knowed while I was there.

BRENT GLASS:

That's what I want; that's great.

DOCK E. HALL:

Now, you take the boilers: they had 150 horse boilers, and they fired
them with hard wood. They'd buy timber, and they'd
put maybe twelve or fifteen out to cut that timber for wood. Then
they'd stack it (in a pen, we called it)…

BRENT GLASS:

A pen?

DOCK E. HALL:

A pen five foot high and four foot long. That's where you
would cut a pen of them. That's where he'd come
around (we called him a checker); he'd come around and take
that pen's number, put down how much it was and turn it into
the office. That's the way we got our pay.

BRENT GLASS:

You were paid by the pen?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

How much would you get paid?

DOCK E. HALL:

I tell you, I think it was about thirteen or fourteen cents a pen.

BRENT GLASS:

A pen?

DOCK E. HALL:

It had to be five foot high, four foot long.

BRENT GLASS:

That's a lot of timber.

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. And we'd cut a lot of it 'til we'd
put most anything we could in to make it "pen up," you
know. And then we had what we called a head man, and he'd go
through and pick out three or four of us, you see. And
there'd come a big tree, or a bad tree or something, when you
were through you had to cut that out, you see, yourself. Or swap with
some other fellow, and get him to come over and help you pull the
crosscut saw, or something like that.

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

BRENT GLASS:

We were talking about the mine. When you worked there about how many
people worked at the mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I'll tell you. It's pretty hard to tell
exactly. Part of the time we worked three shifts.

BRENT GLASS:

What were the hours there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Eight hours.

BRENT GLASS:

Eight hour shifts.

DOCK E. HALL:

You'd go in at seven and you'd come out at three;
go in at three and come out at eleven; and go in at eleven and come out
at seven. Then the day shift would come back.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. About how many would be on your shift?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, there would be maybe, I would say, (well, in the whole
mine—we all wouldn't be, you know, in one place)
in the whole mine underground there'd be maybe about eight.
I'd say it would average somewhere about eight.

BRENT GLASS:

Eight?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, that was the chuckers and the machine runners.

BRENT GLASS:

And miners?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes; miners is the machine runners. That's what we called
them.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And how about above ground? What kind of people would be working
in the stamp mill?

DOCK E. HALL:

On top there was the firemen, and what we called the hoist engineer (he
run the bucket, the scooping bucket up and down, you know, in the mine),
and a blacksmith, and a blacksmith's helper. Maybe you might
say half a dozen right around on top.

BRENT GLASS:

How much would you get paid for chucking? Do you remember?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, I don't exactly remember what they did pay.
Didn't pay too much. I'd say maybe
they'd pay maybe around eighty-five to a dollar a day back
then.

BRENT GLASS:

That sounds about right. Were there many black workers?

DOCK E. HALL:

Not but very few. I remember there was one old colored man and his son;
he was a miner. And he and his son come over from Gold Hill and got a
job there, him as a miner and the boy as a chucker for him.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. Do you remember his name?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, I couldn't call you his name to save my life.
That's been a long time ago. And he'd come over
and stay the weekend. They had a batshanty, and they'd, say,
come on the weekend—say they'd come on Sundays and
go to work Sunday night at eleven. Now, they
didn't work on Sundays, except go to work at eleven
o'clock.

BRENT GLASS:

At night?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. And most of the time when they'd come back, this boy
didn't like it over there because there were no other colored
people around. And he'd say, "Come day, go day, God
send Sunday." He wanted to go back home, you know.
I've heard him say that many a time, the young fellow.

BRENT GLASS:

And he lived in a little… ?

DOCK E. HALL:

Little house they built out for him. Had several houses, but they was
kind of small ones, like him and his Daddy back for the time they was
there, you know, and go home on the weekends.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And he went back to Gold Hill then?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, old Gold Hill.

BRENT GLASS:

But Gold Hill had closed by that time?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. I've never been around Gold Hill when it was ever running
then.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he ever talk about Gold Hill at all?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, once in a while he'd talk about Gold Hill, but, you know,
I couldn't remember the words he'd say. But
he'd talk about running machines over there, and the levels
there was there; and sometimes he'd tell me how rich the
place was.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he think it was richer than Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes. All the sayings, all I've ever heard say is that
around Gold Hill is the richest mines there are in North Carolina.

BRENT GLASS:

That's what I've heard too. Did you ever work in
the stamp mill at Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

You did?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, I did.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you do there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I'd work around. Didn't feed the stamps so
much. [Interruption] Where were we at
then?

BRENT GLASS:

In the stamp mill, what you did there.

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, I would work for There was a man there that
would feed them stamps. First the ore is crushed up with a crusher; and
he'd push this (what we called it was ore), them rocks in and
them stampers would go up and down on it and beat it all up. Then they
had copper plates that would run out of ore, and then they had blankets
pulled over that, and it would catch the rest of it. And a lot of times
we'd wash (well, not a lot of times, but we'd
always) them blankets out, and they'd get all that gold
business out of that. You've never seen a handful of gold and
stuff like that, you know—it'd be like dust or
something. And then they'd scrape it off them plates, copper
plates. And they had quicksilver on that, and they'd scrape
that all off; that was called an amalgamater, that man that done
that.

BRENT GLASS:

There was no automatic belt that brought the ore from the mine into the
stamper?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, yes.

BRENT GLASS:

It was done automatically?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, it was run by a motor—not no motor, it was run by steam.
And it had a belt to carry that stuff over when it was coming over to
this place and put it in the chute, you see. Then he'd come
around and he'd shovel that in and put
it in the stamps: that's called a stamp feeder.

BRENT GLASS:

Stamp feeder. Did you do a little bit of everything in the stamp
mill?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, I was what you might say was a helper in there. They'd
have a man, an amalgamater they called him, and he was the man that
would scrape all that gold off and quicksilver, altogether. Then
they'd take that all and put it together that way. Then they
had what we called an house, and they'd take that and burn
that quicksilver off and make it out in pigs of gold, you know. Small
pieces of gold, we called that pigs. But we didn't see no
gold aside from that one. Now, them , like I tell
you, sometimes you could throw water up on it and wash it off when you
suspect you kind of had like Guinea eggs, you see—sort of
like that.

BRENT GLASS:

This is underground?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you ever find a little gold rock or anything and put it in your
pocket?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

Did they ever check you when you would come out of the mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, never thought enough about that; it wouldn't be useful. If
you wasn't run through that mill there you'd never
know nothing about what it was. We didn't hardly know what
kind of ore we was working on; we didn't know 'til
we went through the mill. The amalgamater and them would find out.

BRENT GLASS:

How about with the blankets? Did they wash out the blankets?

DOCK E. HALL:

And wash out the blankets. And they'd strain that thing, you
know, through strainers, and the gold or quicksilver or anything would
catch at it, you know, and pick it up. Anything heavy, you see, and the
rest of it would go on over. That's the same way with going
across from the stamps across them plates, I was
telling you. The water would run over that and the gold that was in it
would sink through that quicksilver and pick it up, you see. Then
they'd scrape it off and take it altogether (quicksilver and
all) to the house, and then burn that off and burn it into pigs for
gold.

BRENT GLASS:

Into pigs.

DOCK E. HALL:

That's what we called it.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you ever see any gold in the whole time you were there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, I've seen a little of it—when
they'd run it out, that is. They didn't show it to
many people. It wouldn't do good to be like it is now, nohow,
because if they did somebody'd go down and pull a gun on them
and take it. [Interruption]

BRENT GLASS:

We were back in the stamp mill. What was it like to work in the stamp
mill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, it wasn't such hard work, and you wasn't busy
all the time. The man that had to run the steam engine, you
know… And these stamps would raise up and go back down like
that, you know, and you could hear them for ten or twelve miles.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh really?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

So what was it like to be in there?

DOCK E. HALL:

You couldn't hardly be a'talking like me and you;
we couldn't understand one another, hardly, in there.

BRENT GLASS:

So did you wear earplugs or something?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, didn't have none then.

BRENT GLASS:

Where did you prefer to work, in firing the boiler or in the stamp mill or in the mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, that's what I done mostly, firing the boiler. But it
kept you busy, now, firing wood, you see—cord wood. And it
had two a hundred and fifty horse boilers, and you can
imagine… Well, I'll tell you, it'd
average about seven cords of wood on every twelve hours, you can just
about figure. You see, the man on top worked twelve hours.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, I see: only underground worked eight hours.

DOCK E. HALL:

That's right. That's all the law would allow them
to do, work eight hours, I think.

BRENT GLASS:

Underground?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. Well now, what I mean is, that was like it is now—of
course they didn't pay overtime or anything. Now,
I've knowed them to, maybe when somebody'd be out
or didn't come in (maybe it would be a chucker or maybe it
would be a machine runner—what we called a miner), well,
they'd give you so many candles (we used to use candles, you
see) and send them down and tell them to stay down. That way
he'd work sixteen hours before he'd come out of
there.

BRENT GLASS:

I see.

DOCK E. HALL:

Not too often, but every once in a while they'd do that.

BRENT GLASS:

You mean to make up for the person who wasn't there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, if anyone was out, see, sick or something, why this other
fellow'd work in his place.

BRENT GLASS:

So the candles were a way of people knowing how many people…
?

DOCK E. HALL:

And how to see around in there; that's all you had to go by
was them candles. And they had what we called candle holders, a thing
that you'd put the candle in. And it had a swirl on the end;
you could stick it in a timber or hang it on a rock (you got a hanger
for it too; you could hang it either way).

BRENT GLASS:

But why couldn't they make someone stay down there sixteen
hours? Why did someone have to be absent?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, that would be if there was somebody… They'd
run then, like I told you, three shifts, you see. And if a machine
runner was out (a miner) or a chucker was out, then they'd
get somebody else up there to go down and make up for them, and send
down for him to stay down 'til the other man would come
in.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. Did people miss work a lot?

DOCK E. HALL:

No: people back then had to work.

BRENT GLASS:

Six days a week?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, we worked about six days a week; didn't work on Sundays,
now. Come off at eleven o'clock Saturday night, and then go
back Sunday night at eleven o'clock.

BRENT GLASS:

Did any children work at the mine at that time?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

They weren't allowed to?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

How about women? Did they have any jobs?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, none. Maybe in the office they'd work a little, but that
was all. No women around the mine work.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you ever see women on these wooden rockers, stand up on top of these
wooden rockers and rock back and forth, and they'd put a
little bit of ground-up gold in the rockers?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, never seen women do that. I've seen them rockers.

BRENT GLASS:

You have seen them?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. I know at the old Sally Coggins mine they cut down a big poplar and
hewed it out (cut it off, you know, just the top of it and each end of
it to get it about that far out). Then they had to take the and chip that all out, and pin it down so it was
like my hand, you know. Then they'd put that thing to rocking
like that. And they had a thing out at the end, when it would rock out
and go out the other way; then them blankets that I told you about (and
stuff like that) would catch what gold come out of that. Oh, they had a
way of catching it all that they could.

BRENT GLASS:

You lived there with your wife [at Coggins], right?

DOCK E. HALL:

Right.

BRENT GLASS:

What kind of house did you live in?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I lived in the valley. Let's see, the house I lived in
there on the mine was about a four room house.

BRENT GLASS:

And the company built that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. They didn't have too many of them there then. They had
one store there, a grocery store.

BRENT GLASS:

And you lived there alone. Did they charge you rent for that house?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Do you remember what they charged you?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, I don't, to tell you the truth. We'd pay by the
month, or they'd it out at the office, and I just
don't remember what it was.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you have a kitchen in the house?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, a kitchen. That's the reason I was telling you it was
about a four room house. Seems to me like the house we lived in had two
rooms like this and a front porch. And then the living room run off, and
I think the dining room and the kitchen and the little back porch or the
stoop.

BRENT GLASS:

And you had an outside toilet?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes.

BRENT GLASS:

DOCK E. HALL:

Apart from the house. And well water: we didn't have no water
in no house, nothing like that. They had three or four wells of good
water.

BRENT GLASS:

How long did you work there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I worked off and on there for, I'll say, four or five
years. It don't run any now.

BRENT GLASS:

No.

DOCK E. HALL:

My boy, if you go there now (of course back then they'd got
different pumps from what we have now to what we had then, but we had
what they called a number nine Cameron pump)…

BRENT GLASS:

Cameron?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. And I'll bet if you go there now and start that thing up
(that run by steam), and put one of them number nine Cameron pumps in
there, I'll bet it would take you three months to even pump
up what water was in there out (if you pumped day and night).

BRENT GLASS:

It's all filled with water, right?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, and it's hollowed out all around every which way. Now,
they didn't hollow all of it, but they had drifts, you know
(we called them) back in like that. We'd have them at the
fifty foot level and a hundred, a hundred and fifty and then two
hundred; two hundred and fifty and then three hundred, three hundred and
fifty and then the four hundred. And it went on down to sixteen hundred
and eighteen feet, I believe.

BRENT GLASS:

Sixteen hundred feet deep?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, on an incline.

BRENT GLASS:

Wow. And how did you get down there? By elevator?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, you'd go down on this bucket, until the last few years
they had what we called a skiff. It was made like that thing there and
had a lip run out on it like that, and it had four wheels on it (one
here, one here, one here and one here) and then they had a track. And it
was on an incline, forty degrees. But this hoister would have a pulley
way up here and a poppy head (we called it), and then it would run right
around to the hoisting engine here. And he had a little old thing there
they could blow in and stick so many rings, and he'd know
that they wanted to go up, or where they wanted to move, or how he
understood all that. And sometimes we'd come out on that
skiff, and a lot of them would climb out—that was a pretty
good climb.

BRENT GLASS:

All the way out?

DOCK E. HALL:

Climb the ladders too. And they had one of them solrays at the place I
was telling you about. They'd have this place, you know, for
a good-sized man to go through so that anything wouldn't
fall. And that solray went on down to the next one; that
ladder'd go on down through.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you call that, a solray?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, a solray. They'd fix a lot of poles and timbers and stuff
so in any blasting you came up there and it wouldn't tear
up

BRENT GLASS:

Did you bring down any water with you to drink on the job down there, or
anything?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. They'd drink what water was down there; it was just as
clear and clean as it could be.

BRENT GLASS:

You got paid twice a month, you said.

DOCK E. HALL:

Well as I told you, the last few years they paid the first and fifteenth.

BRENT GLASS:

And what was payday like at Coggins? Did they have any parties?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, no. You'd just go to the office and they'd give
you a check, or you'd get paid in money—either
one. Just went to the office and the superintendent would pay you
off.

BRENT GLASS:

What did people do for entertainment there? Was there any kind of
entertainment?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, not around the mine much. We'd go to corn shuckings and
all, and attend all the Fiddlers' Conventions and stuff like
that. No movies.

BRENT GLASS:

Any card playing, or anything like that?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

No card playing?

DOCK E. HALL:

like they do in the country now. No poker
playing, no gambling or nothing like that was going on. Drink a little
homemade liquor, that was about all.

BRENT GLASS:

Were there any accidents that you remember?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. There was three men got killed out there. Let's see, four
men got killed while I was there.

BRENT GLASS:

How did that happen?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I was just talking about that skiff. Well now, they had a ladder,
what we called a ladder road right beside where that skiff went down in
the shaft, and it was kind of built off—you know, penned
up—so that you wouldn't get over in the shaft. And
you come up on that ladder (you'd go climb that ladder) or
you get on that skiff. And so many rings would tell you when there was
men on the skiff; this man the hoister would get that. And there was four working on it at that time, and they
started out. And that was on payday; I believe it was the fifteenth day
of September, and I can't tell you what year to save my life.
But anyway it was on payday, the three o'clock shift that
started out. And three of them got on the skiff that was coming out. And
one of them, he didn't get in the skiff (he was afraid of it)
and he climbed the ladder—and he got out alive. And the
others got up oh, I don't know, as well as I remember
somebody said about a hundred and eighty or ninety feet and that skiff
jumped the track. And it had a lip on it, you know, like that, and it
caught in one of the joints in the railing of the track and went down.
And they just had to bail to, you know; didn't have a thing
in the world. It just turned and poured them right back down in there,
and that killed all three of them.

BRENT GLASS:

And you were working there then?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

What was the talk around the mine then? Did they go down and get the
bodies?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, they went down. They chained that skiff and went down there and
brang them out, one by one.

BRENT GLASS:

Do you remember who they were?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, I knowed them and worked with them days after days.

BRENT GLASS:

Who were they? What were their names?

DOCK E. HALL:

One of them was Charlie Cranford, and one of them was Neal Class, and the
other one was Walter Sanders. That's three of them, now.

BRENT GLASS:

Charlie Cranford, Neal Class, and Walter Sanders.

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, then after that a bunch of them was going—I believe this
was on a Sunday night. I won't say, 'cause if you
print this or somebody hears of it
they'll want to know about this, and I want to tell the
truth, you know, near as I can.

BRENT GLASS:

Sure.

DOCK E. HALL:

Near as I remember. But this I believe was on Sunday night—now
it might not have been Sunday night, it might have been Saturday night.
Anyway, there was a boy named Griff Parrish, a young man about your
size, and he come up to my house. And I used to cut hair (there
wasn't no barber shops right around, and I'd cut
hair). And he come up one evening to have me to cut his hair. And there
was a protracted meeting going on, what we called protracted, big
meeting, you know.

BRENT GLASS:

Protracted meeting.

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. And he was talking about going to that meeting. And he wanted me to
cut his hair (a good fellow), and I took a straight chair and set it on
the porch and cut his hair. And he offered to pay me; and I
don't remember whether it was a ten dollar bill or whether it
was a twenty (might have been a ten), but he offered to pay me. And I
said, "Griff, I ain't got no change for
that." I think it was about fifteen cents or a quarter (maybe
fifteen cents, I don't know)—it was money then.
And I said, "I've got no change for that."
And he said, "Oh, I ain't going to pay you
nohow"—or something like that. And he had a brother,
Walter Parrish, and I told him about that way afterwards: "You
know, he tried to pay me that, and I never did take it."

BRENT GLASS:

And then he died right… ?"

DOCK E. HALL:

That boy, he got killed. They started down the mine, four of them: now
two of them were chuckers and two of them were machine runners. Got onto
one of these pendices way on down, nearly down maybe a hundred foot from the bottom.

BRENT GLASS:

What do you call them, pendices?

DOCK E. HALL:

Pendices, where they built, you know…

BRENT GLASS:

How do you spell that? Do you know?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

OK.

DOCK E. HALL:

That's where the ladder goes through, like I told you, down
through that. Well, there was a fellow up above him, and he fell off of
that ladder above them. And there was two below him, and he knocked them
two off. And they went on down to the bottom; and it killed one of
them—that boy Griff Parrish—and broke the other
one's, Walter (that guy, I knowed him for years; I forget his
name now)…

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, that's all right.

DOCK E. HALL:

In other words, you can say two of them. But the one of them just broke
his back and was kind of broken up; and it did kill the other one.
Danged if I don't believe it was Sunday night, because I was
learning buckets and I was working twelve hours a day, you see. And I
lived right there close to the mine. And a fellow come by and waked me
up, and I went out there when they went down and chained the thing down
and brought him out. And I pulled off my coat, I remember, and laid it
right down like that on the little old trolley where we dumped the ore
and stuff that come out. And we laid his head on my coat there for a
while. And his name was Griff Parrish: good fellow, Walter
Parrish's brother, there right going down with him. And Pete
Green was the man that fell off of the ladder. He happened to be close
to one of them pendices, and he fell out on that (didn't hurt
him); and the other who he knocked loose from the ladder, he went on
down. And one of them got killed and the other got his back broke. Walter something: I can't even
remember.

BRENT GLASS:

Was there anyone who would come and investigate these accidents? Anyone
from the state come and check up on it?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, not that ever I knowed anything about.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, who owned the mine at that time?

DOCK E. HALL:

At that time R.P. Richardson and his sons from Reidsville.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes, right.

DOCK E. HALL:

They've got a tobacco factory there, you know; they own it.
The old man's dead, but I think maybe one or two of the boys,
they own it yet.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes, I think you're right. Who was the boss man there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Then for me? Well, the superintendent was Charlie Dickens.

BRENT GLASS:

What kind of boss man was he?

DOCK E. HALL:

He was what we called superintendent.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes. Was he a good man?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh yes, good fellow; I always liked him, always got along with him good.
In fact I got along with all of them; they was just country people, you
know.

BRENT GLASS:

They were all from around that area?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, right of them. Some of them come from other places on and get a job
there: miners coming from Gold Hill

BRENT GLASS:

Were they mostly farm people who worked there? Were they farmers, and
then they came to be miners, or were they real miners?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, they was just raised up there on the farm, you know, and got and go to work; maybe that's the way
they learned. That's about the only way
I could tell you.

BRENT GLASS:

Did any of the people who worked there have any trouble with the
superintendent?

DOCK E. HALL:

None that I ever knowed to amount to anything, no. He was an awful good
man. I'll tell you, the people there got along mighty good.
Oh, you might hear one cuss or two, or something like that; but as far
as fighting and all like that, I never knowed anything around that
happened much like that.

BRENT GLASS:

When the mine closed, where did everyone go? What happened?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, they just left out and went to other places: back to Gold Hill and
Congressville and Troy, and to other places where they could get jobs.
They was on the way when it closed down.

BRENT GLASS:

Did you ever keep in touch with any of the people who used to work
there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, I've seen them lots of times, some of them around here.
They're gone, a whole lot of them now, though, because you
take me (eighty-three going on eighty-four, you know).
There's a whole lot of them gone.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. But they didn't go out west to mines out in the west,
or anything like that?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. Some of them went, maybe, back to Gold Hill. And in Tennessee there
are copper mines; some of them went over there. First one place; they
didn't go, any of them, very far. Most of them was home
people.

BRENT GLASS:

What other mines did you work at? You said you worked at other ones.

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, there's a mine called the Sally Coggins mine; I used to
work there.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you do there?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, that was a mine that was called a surface mine: the work was on top
of the ground. I think the shaft was about fifty foot, the deepest it
ever got. But they worked the surface, you know. And they had a trough
made out of boards, and we'd put that dirt in that trough.
And it had holes through it, you know, and they'd wash that
on down to the mill, down where the stamps and stuff were.

BRENT GLASS:

They had a stamp mill at the Sally Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

How big a mill was that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, a small-like one, nothing like old Coggins.

BRENT GLASS:

Coggins was fifty stamps, wasn't it?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. And old Russell mine, that was above; I never knowed nothing about
that, though. This mine where I was telling you, this Sally Coggins, we
had an open cut there, and that was where the surface was. But the work
there was work at the surface: like you'd go out there now
and go to picking up…

BRENT GLASS:

So you would dig with a shovel?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, diggers and shovelers, and rolling a wheelbarrow, or dumping it
where the trough would take it on down. They had a belt that was tied to
that that would take it on to the mill—oh, maybe five
times

BRENT GLASS:

What made you go there to Sally Coggins? Did you leave the old
Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes.

BRENT GLASS:

Why did you do that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I don't remember just exactly what prompted me to do
that. The Coggins must have been shut down; it didn't work a
whole lot of the time. It belonged to a company; the Kelleys from
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they come there and bought it. It had been an
old mine before, but I don't know who owned it except
Cogginses. Well, the old Coggins mine was owned at one time by
Coggins.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. So the Sally Coggins was owned by these Pittsburgh people, the
Kelleys.

DOCK E. HALL:

Kelleys, yes.

BRENT GLASS:

But the machinery there wasn't as … complicated as
at Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. They had a compressor there, and they had a crusher and, well, maybe
a little old place where they run them through the mill, you know,
washing, and wash the blankets and stuff like that—and a
rocker, like I was saying, they had one of them.

BRENT GLASS:

And who worked on that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, different ones,

BRENT GLASS:

Well, how about some of the other mines you worked at? Do you remember
which other ones?

DOCK E. HALL:

I worked at what they called Morris Mountain.

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, Petey was my nephew, see; he was my brother's boy, my
youngest brother's boy. There was only but two of them. And
one lives out close to Taylorsville, and Petey, of course, he travels
around.

BRENT GLASS:

We were saying just before that there was a zinc mine. Did they use zinc
at the Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

To amalgamate the gold?

DOCK E. HALL:

Coggins and that didn't have anything to do with them or
whatever. It was just a different company of them.

BRENT GLASS:

And they didn't buy zinc from them at all, or anything like
that?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. The other mines, none of us could make it together.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. So you worked at Dark Springs, Sally Coggins, Morris Mountain,
Coggins. Coggins was also called the "rich Cog,"
right?

DOCK E. HALL:

It was one of them Richardsons.

BRENT GLASS:

Rich man's cog, right?

DOCK E. HALL:

That's the reason it got that name.

BRENT GLASS:

I see. And can you name any of the others?

DOCK E. HALL:

That I worked with, you mean? Oh, I worked with lots of them. Now, when I
was firing, this man that run the hoisting engine (like I told you, to
pull that stuff out), Lee Scott, he was from Gold Hill.

BRENT GLASS:

Were there any English people working at these mines? No English
people?

DOCK E. HALL:

None that I knowed anything about.

BRENT GLASS:

Mostly North Carolinians?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. A lot of people come down here to that mine I was telling you about,
Sally Coggins. And Kelleys, they was from Pittsburgh; and them kind of
people was about the only ones that come down here that I knowed
anything about. Now, there could have been somebody up in the North
somewhere that had stock in the Coggins mine, but see, he would never
come around and mess in the mine. He'd come to the office,
maybe, or something like that, so I didn't know it.

BRENT GLASS:

So you didn't have any. I know at Gold Hill they had a big
hotel, and a lot of rich people coming in to visit
there and all this. You didn't have that at Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

No.

BRENT GLASS:

Did Lee Scott ever tell you anything much about Gold Hill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, not too much. He'd tell me about how deep the shaft was,
and all stuff like that.

BRENT GLASS:

Well which was deeper, Coggins or Gold Hill?

DOCK E. HALL:

Oh, Gold Hill; it was about eight hundred and something.

BRENT GLASS:

Right. You said Coggins was sixteen hundred. You meant six hundred?

DOCK E. HALL:

Six hundred and eighteen feet; that's where you got that.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, right; OK. Did any of the miners get any illnesses from working
underground? Did they get sick from the dampness?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, no.

BRENT GLASS:

You hear about this miners' consumption.

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, I've heard of that, but none of the people around there
that I ever knowed anything about ever got that. That down there is a
good healthy country, and it's right in the mountains. The
miningest parts there are in North Carolina are right down in there. You
ought to get people to carry you down there.

BRENT GLASS:

I've been to the Coggins.

DOCK E. HALL:

You have?

BRENT GLASS:

I've been in that stamp mill.

DOCK E. HALL:

You have? Well, you know things about it. What time was you there?

BRENT GLASS:

I was there in the summer of 1974.

DOCK E. HALL:

I mean what time of year?

BRENT GLASS:

Summer.

DOCK E. HALL:

Thank God. You'd have better watch out what you was doing in
there.

BRENT GLASS:

Why?

DOCK E. HALL:

There's rattlesnakes in there as big as my arm, and you could
pull one right out. You know where that old house is there? Right in
front of that old house and the mill house there they killed one; and
the fellow took a hold of him after he killed him and held him up like
that by the tail, and his head'd touch the ground. Had about
fourteen or fifteen rattles. And that's happened since,
they've been in there since that old mine's been
down.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, did you know that they're making a state historic
landmark over near Concord at the Reid gold mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Reid?

BRENT GLASS:

Reid. That was supposed to be the first in North Carolina, way back.

DOCK E. HALL:

I was never over there.

BRENT GLASS:

And they took ten stamps from the Coggins and took them out of the mill,
and brought them over to the Reid.

DOCK E. HALL:

Wasn't that old mill about to fall in when you was there? I
know it's bound to be.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, I went in it; I went up around it. They found those old woolen
blankets there, still there.

DOCK E. HALL:

They did? I knowed they was there.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes.

DOCK E. HALL:

You could go, like, on that highway by there, you know. You can be along
under there when that mine was running and what we called shooting (when they'd be putting blasts in); you
could feel that up there when you'd walk along, bloom bloom
bloom bloom bloom. You could hear it all along there, coming on out onto
that highway where you come along there.

BRENT GLASS:

On Route 109, I think it is? You mean, right by the road, right by the
mine?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes; that's not 109.

BRENT GLASS:

No, I know. That's another road.

DOCK E. HALL:

That's what we called New Hope Road.

BRENT GLASS:

New Hope Road.

DOCK E. HALL:

Comes out by my brother's. Now, you go on from the Coggins
mine; listen, when you go towards Eldorado from the Coggins mine (in
other words, the mine is here and you go that way, like you were going
to Troy), the first house you come to up on the left-hand side and a big
lake, well right there is where my brother lives. The only brother
I've got lives right there.

BRENT GLASS:

Did he work at Coggins too?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, he never did, no.

BRENT GLASS:

I thought of one thing I wanted to ask. Why did people go to work at the
mines rather than go over to some of the textile mills? You could get
work there.

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, when that mine was there like it was and running like it was,
Albemarle was about the closest place you could go to. And then they
just worked children mostly in them, you know. Cotton mills usually
didn't pay no money to amount to anything. They paid more
money at the Coggins than they would there; that's the reason
they would come to the Coggins mine. And a lot of people did move from
there and come over to Albemarle and put their children
in—you know children used to work in cotton mills. A lot of
them didn't get to go to school on
account of the people keeping them in the mill. But now you
can't do that, you know.

BRENT GLASS:

No. So did you go into town? What did people think about gold miners? Did
they think it was a good job, or did they think not?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, there ain't many people that knows much about it. It was
a pretty tough job. Now, you go down there in this kind of weather, and
you go down there and work your eight hours, and you come out at what we
called (up at the top) the poppy-head. You come up and stick your head
out there in the changing room (where they had to change clothes and all
like that—it'd be maybe as far as from here out to
that tree outside from the shaft), do you know part of them had on
oilclothes, kind of. It was like a shower of rain down there, a whole
lot of it, especially in that shaft. And do you know that the darned
clothes would freeze on them before they could get out there? Back then
we had cold weather.

BRENT GLASS:

Yes. It's not as cold now, is it?

DOCK E. HALL:

We don't have nothing now like we did then. I just told you,
where I was born at there was thirteen inches of snow. And that was down
at And God, it's warm down in this
country now: the climate changed. You know, I was reading something in
the papers, that it's been cool down in Florida in some
places. They used to didn't have no heat up there in northern
Florida; now they've got either electric heat or, you know,
some kind of heat.

BRENT GLASS:

They didn't need it.

DOCK E. HALL:

No, they didn't used to; but they do now in winter.

BRENT GLASS:

You know, they used to call the cotton mill people
"lintheads"; have you heard that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, I've heard of that.

BRENT GLASS:

Did they call the gold miners anything? Did they ever have a name like
that for gold miners?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. A miner they might call you. "Oh, you're a miner
up at the mine?" A miner means that he's one of them
machine runners: milling the ground, knowed how to bore them holes. You
see, they bored them and put the powder in them like that with a fuse.
And then when you'd set this fire you'd have one
shorter than the other, and one longer than the other. And
you'd light the longest one first, and light the next one and
the next one and the next one (about five or six is about all
you'd have time to light). Then you'd get on way
back in the other over there when
that'd go off, you see. And that'd break that
ground all out like that. Well, they'd just fix it so it
wouldn't be but about, I'd say, eight by eight
foot what we called levels and drifts, and all like that. Then they had
places up there we called drifts; we'd go up there and
work.

BRENT GLASS:

You left the mine in the middle of the nineteen twenties?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, I left them down in nineteen and nineteen; I left Eldorado. The mine
wasn't running then.

BRENT GLASS:

In 1919?

DOCK E. HALL:

In 19 and 19 I left there and went to Statesville.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, so the years you're talking about now were about, what,
1915 you worked there? 1916?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, along like that.

BRENT GLASS:

You were about twenty-three?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, it was before that.

BRENT GLASS:

Before that?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, because at 1916 I had come to Thomasville. I'd already
been to Thomasville and went back down there, you understand;
that's how come me being there after I was a man, you
see.

BRENT GLASS:

So you were about twenty-one, twenty-two when you went to work at the
Coggins?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes, something like that; yes.

BRENT GLASS:

And then the Coggins opened up again, didn't it, in the
twenties?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. It opened up again, run a good long while since Richardson had it:
R.P. Richardson and son at Reidsville.

BRENT GLASS:

You didn't go back there, though?

DOCK E. HALL:

No. I knowed some people that used to live there, and they kind of
unwatered it part of the time and took some samples. But they never did
do anything that I ever heard of working in the mine.

BRENT GLASS:

What did you do when you went to Statesville?

DOCK E. HALL:

When I worked at Statesville I went up with my brother-in-law to a
sawmill; worked up there a while, and left the sawmill. Come back to
States-ville and went to work at a lumber plant there. Then I left there
and come back to Lexington.

BRENT GLASS:

And what did you do there?

DOCK E. HALL:

I've been around, but, I tell you, this is what I call home,
here: Thomasville.

BRENT GLASS:

How many children did you have?

DOCK E. HALL:

Great God, man! [laughter] I had,
let's see, ten in all, of the wives I had. And I had three of
them.

BRENT GLASS:

Three wives?

DOCK E. HALL:

The first one's living now, and we had six. And got along
pretty good until… That was the
jealousest woman I ever saw in my life. Hell, I couldn't step
out from her side without some other woman having me. That's
the kind of looking bastard I was: that's me.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh boy! And who's the woman there?

DOCK E. HALL:

That's my wife.

BRENT GLASS:

First wife?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, the second wife. And I've got one sort of about the same
size (but it's standing up) with me and my last wife; it was
taken in Greensboro. I told you I wanted you to meet my
sister-in-law.

BRENT GLASS:

So are your children living in North Carolina now?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, I got two boys; one boy is in Statesville. And one of them, he used
to run a little store and a service station; and he had a heart attack,
so he don't do anything now but hang around home. And his
wife does a lot of altering and sewing, you know. He's got
his own home there and everything. And the other one's been
on the police force there. He said yesterday (no, day before
yesterday—today's what: Tuesday, Wednesday,
ain't it?)…

BRENT GLASS:

Today's Wednesday.

DOCK E. HALL:

They was here yesterday. He come on Tuesday from Statesville, come over
to see me, him and his wife.

BRENT GLASS:

Where are some of the other children?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, them two is in Statesville. And I've got one that lives
out from High Point towards Greensboro—that's
another boy. These ones I'm telling you first is by my first
wife, the one that's living. They live, them two in
Statesville, and then the other one lives between here and High Point
(that's the boy). And I've got a girl lives in Marksville (that was by my first wife). And
then I've got a boy (this one here) that's up in
Virginia, right close to West Virginia, Tennessee and
Virginia—but he lives in Virginia. And he stayed in the Army
twenty years. Damned rascal's getting along good now, too; he
gets that Army pay, and then he's the boss welder at that
academy up there where he's at. And hell, he makes over two
hundred dollars a week there, then besides what he gets out of the
government. Gets along good. Well, them gets along good in
Statesville.

BRENT GLASS:

So most of your children, then, settled around North Carolina?

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, no. My baby one's in Arizona; and one of my girls is up
in (I told you a while ago) Morristown.

BRENT GLASS:

New Jersey?

DOCK E. HALL:

New Jersey, yes. And one at Marksville—out from Marksville.
That's all of them: the others are dead, the rest of them,
now.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh really?

DOCK E. HALL:

I got one boy who was a seamfitter (and about your size), and he worked
in the High Point Sprinkler Company. They sent him to Tuluska, Ohio to
do some work (him and some other fellows). And he'd been home
and started back, and got out from Columbus out to Delaware, Ohio. He
ate breakfast and left here Saturday at noon; and Sunday morning he ate
breakfast there and was going on, and some damned teenage boy
who'd been out all night run in behind him and knocked him
out of the car and killed him. Then I had a small boy (he
wasn't but about eighteen months old); he died. And then I
had a daughter that lived in Charlotte; and she died of a heart attack
three or four years ago. And that's all of them.

BRENT GLASS:

One last question I wanted to ask you. When you were growing up, did you have any goals for yourself that you
wanted to achieve? Did you think about anything that you wanted to do in
particular? What did you dream about being? Do you remember?

DOCK E. HALL:

No, nothing onto this furniture business, like I come here. When I left
down there and went to Statesville, then I come back to the furniture
business; I come back to the furniture factories.

BRENT GLASS:

That was your goal, was to work in furniture?

DOCK E. HALL:

Yes. Well, I bandsawed fifty years. You know what that is.

BRENT GLASS:

No.

DOCK E. HALL:

You don't know nothing about it. Well, it's a saw
that cuts out everything around that you want, any way that you want to
cut it. And you have to do that yourself; it don't do it
itself. Most saws you push stuff through it, but this you had to use
your own hands to cut around like that. Not bragging at all, but I was
kind of one as good as ever went through here too. Well, a man works
hard fifty years, he ought to know some!

BRENT GLASS:

I hope so.

DOCK E. HALL:

That's what's the matter with them old feed stamps,
and them things. Raising all that crowd of kids, you see, I had to do
something, didn't I? Is that thing going on now?

BRENT GLASS:

Yes.

DOCK E. HALL:

Well, they asked the truth; they ought to know it.

BRENT GLASS:

Well, I want to thank you. I'm going to turn it off; I just
wanted to thank you for spending the time talking with me.